


Tea and Liquorice

by anon7912



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Humor, Lee Juyeon (The Boyz) is Whipped, M/M, Magical Realism, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anon7912/pseuds/anon7912
Summary: Juyeon is a witch who loves rules, textbooks, pros and cons lists and the Magical Constitution. His new mentor, who is possibly weirder than he is handsome (which is to say, very, very weird) somehow convinces him that all of those things matter less than he might think.
Relationships: Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Moon Hyungseo | Kevin, Lee Jaehyun | Hyunjae/Lee Juyeon
Comments: 28
Kudos: 182





	Tea and Liquorice

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! 
> 
> This is cheesy and tooth-rotting fluff and there's not much else to say about it. Entirely self-indulgent. Bordering on disgusting.
> 
> Enjoy!

Juyeon checks the address on the carefully folded piece of paper in his palm one more time before knocking on the little wooden door of the compact, traditional house in front of him. He’s in Hapjeong-dong _technically_ , but the magical district had shimmered into place once he stepped foot into the neighbourhood, houses of all shapes and sizes sprouting up in the spaces between the non-magical buildings. 

It’s one of the best parts of being a witch, Juyeon thinks. Seeing a piece of Seoul that has been lost to non-magical folk and preserved for only supernaturals is a privilege he takes very, very seriously.

When Juyeon doesn’t hear a response, he tentatively pushes the door open. He knows he’s expected - they’ve had this appointment set for weeks now - so he doesn’t think it’s _too_ impolite.

The sight that greets him is simultaneously wonderful and chaotic.

Lining the walls on rickety shelves is a whole world of magical mayhem in the form of leather-bound tomes, trinkets that gleam gold and brass under the warm light of the cottage and more things in jars than Juyeon has ever seen.

His eyes light up with wonder as he soaks in the horned whizzflies zooming about the shop and the shimmer of magic that shifts with every flutter of their wings in the air. 

Has it been mentioned that Juyeon loves being a witch? 

Just then, he hears a zippy tinkling voice, and Juyeon’s eyes zero in on the back of the store where he sees a pixie darting angrily about like a disgruntled hummingbird. The shopkeeper has his back to the fae and Juyeon edges closer out of curiosity. He’s pretty rusty on his Pixilish, but he can almost make out what the little creature is saying when he draws near. 

“Just don’t understand why- It’s so- Why can’t you-” is as far as Juyeon gets before suddenly, the shopkeeper waves his hand and the fae disappears into thin air. 

“Hey!” Juyeon blurts out unthinkingly. “You can’t just do that to someone! That’s totally against the Magical Constitution Section B, Article-”

The shopkeeper doesn’t even turn around, just jerks his arm haphazardly at Juyeon. “Nah Chanhee’s fine, I only sent him to the In Between. He’ll fly home in no time.” The man turns and Juyeon starts at the rather blinding beam pulling at the witch’s pink lips. “What can I do for you?” 

Juyeon blinks sort of dumbly back before clearing his throat. He bows and begins politely, “Pleased to meet you, I’m-”

A pale hand shoots out to grab his chin and Juyeon almost reels back with shock. “Hey have you got a glamour on?” the witch asks appraisingly, large brown eyes traversing Juyeon’s face curiously. 

Juyeon, too surprised to rebuff the query, responds blankly, “No, why?” 

The witch releases his face. “Oh sorry, didn’t think all that beauty was natural.” 

A slightly maniacal grin is turned upon Juyeon. When he doesn’t react, the man clicks his tongue obnoxiously loud and then shoots finger guns at him. “That’s a freebie pickup line for ya, you can take it to the club this Friday!” 

_Finger guns_. 

“Wha- stop that!” Juyeon sputters, breaking out of his stupor. “Maester Lee, my name is Lee Juyeon, I’m here because my brother Sangyeon said you were willing to mentor me for the summer before final exams,” he says hotly. 

The witch laughs, pearly teeth and dancing eyes, before settling down to nod solemnly. 

“So serious! But yes I know who you are,” he claps a hand on Juyeon’s back. “You can just call me Hyunjae hyung, Maester Lee sounds so weird.” Unprompted, Hyunjae begins pushing Juyeon towards the small waiting area in the shop — a little nook of worn sofas and pouffes with both magical and non-magical idle reading scattered about.

Juyeon is shoved unceremoniously onto one particularly garish orange pouffe, and he has to scramble to fold his long limbs tightly so that he doesn’t kick anything over. Hyunjae throws himself onto the sofa and crosses his legs under him. 

“Want some tea? You should have some tea, you’re looking a little flushed,” Hyunjae rattles off as he waves his hand towards a curtained off section of the shop. A hideously ugly porcelain teapot comes floating out and Juyeon finds a mug dancing before his nose in a manner he can only describe as _threatening_ until he acquiesces. 

“Sure, ‘d love some,” he says hastily. The mug, placated apparently, floats gently down into his waiting hands.

Juyeon can feel his new mentor watching him keenly as he takes his first sip. Even though the tea has a distinctly fungal flavour and is scaldingly hot, Juyeon pulls his face into a smile nonetheless. 

“Thank you Maes- Hyunjae hyung,” he murmurs. The witch opposite him beams emphatically.

“Okay so tell me a bit about yourself — what’re you hoping to get out of this mentorship?” Hyunjae asks, curly hair bouncing atop his head with every gesticulation. Now that the frankly rather erratic mage has stopped bouncing around, Juyeon has a moment to observe him, and to his utter horror, he realises that his new mentor is- well, good-looking.

Unbidden, a hot flush creeps its way up Juyeon’s face as his mentor blinks his dark doe eyes in keen interest. To his chagrin, Juyeon suddenly becomes hyperaware of the number of _teeth_ he has. 

“I- uh,” he coughs to clear the mushroom-flavoured lump in his throat. “I’m actually in the military track at the academy, but I didn’t- didn’t get an internship at one of the war magic institutes. My advisor thought it would be good to round out my experience with more practical magic so I asked Sangyeon hyung if he knew anyone who would be willing to have me for the summer.”

He remembers acutely how bitterly disappointed he had been to not get one of the prestigious internships, and even now, after having spent hours listening to his advisor explain that Juyeon simply didn’t need a mentorship in this branch of witchcraft, he can still feel the curling tendrils of frustration in his chest.

Hyunjae cocks his head to one side as he observes Juyeon. “You don’t really want to be here,” he notes — a statement, not a question. Juyeon flushes with embarrassment and hurriedly says, “N-no, that’s not-”

His new mentor laughs and waves him off. “It’s fine Juyeon-ah! I don’t care, you don’t have to lie to me. I was on the military track at the academy with your brother, I know how coveted those internships are.” 

This makes Juyeon’s eyebrows fly up in surprise. “Really?” 

Hyunjae nods pensively. “Majoring in combat and assault magic. I was pretty good at it too, but all of my classmates were so stuffy and boring - no offence - so I switched last minute to interdisciplinary witchcraft.”

Juyeon puts his mug down - unsurprisingly, mushroom tea tastes worse when tepid - and opens his mouth to ask another question when a rather harried looking werewolf comes stumbling through the shop door, sending the little brass bell tinkling in his wake.

“Hyung!” the shapeshifter shouts. Hyunjae jumps up and Juyeon follows him with alarm.

“Sunwoo-ya, what happened?” Hyunjae flies through the air - although fly sounds too serene for the magically-assisted leap he takes - to land in front of the young man. 

“I was at the store and they had my favourite gum back in stock - the watermelon peach one remember? - and I got so excited that my fucking tail just burst out of my pants and now there’s a ho-ooo-ole.” The last word is veritably howled into the small shop as Sunwoo gets progressively more agitated, and a glass of sun-dried mandrake stems shatters by the door. 

Hyunjae chuckles in relief and throws his arm around the distraught youngster. “Aw ‘m sorry bud, that sucks. Don’t worry, I’ll fix you right up.” He spins Sunwoo around to inspect the damage. Just as the werewolf had said, there’s an enormous rip along the seat of the jeans, exposing a long fluffy tail and a glimpse of a pair of Spongebob boxers.

“Laundry day?” Hyunjae asks wryly, and Sunwoo flushes. 

“Shut up,” he growls, exposing one side of his canines in jest. 

Hyunjae snickers before turning his hand in a circular motion over the rip and the jagged seams in the fabric darn themselves up, forming a neat hole around the base of Sunwoo’s tail. “Why don’t you just buy trousers with the hole pre-sewn in?” the witch asks a little exasperatedly.

Sunwoo scoffs and straightens up, twisting a little to inspect his fixed jeans. “Yeah right, and pay extra for less fabric? You’re outta your mind.”

Juyeon muffles a small laugh into his hand then, and Sunwoo seems to notice his presence for the first time. The young man flushes hotly, quickly grabbing his tail to hide it behind his back — a knee jerk reaction that seems to embarrass him further if the plaintive whine that escapes his chest is anything to go by. 

“Sunwoo, this is Juyeon, he’s an old school friend’s little brother; he’ll be shadowing me for the summer.” Hyunjae gestures at them to bow to one another and they comply, Sunwoo’s blush receding upon learning that Juyeon is a supernatural too. “I’m gonna grab something for you, you two mingle in the meantime,” Hyunjae says before disappearing into thin air.

“Sorry for…” Juyeon trails off, a little unsure of what exactly, except that he feels bad for the redness still lingering on Sunwoo’s neck. The werewolf smiles and shakes his head. 

“You’re a witch too, then?” he asks, tail swishing comfortably behind him. He grabs the black beanie perched precariously on top of his head and pulls it off, his brown ears twitching into view. “You don’t mind, do you?” Sunwoo confirms. “M’just really sweaty under here,” he laughs.

“You’re fine,” Juyeon says. It’s not that non-magicals really object to co-existing with supernatural beings anymore — not since the Great War in 1855 anyway. It’s more that it’s still sort of awkward being so visibly different, and Juyeon has a lot of sympathy for the young werewolf in front of him flicking sweat off of his ears.

Just then, Hyunjae quite literally pops back into the room, materialising so quickly that Juyeon stumbles back a little in surprise. 

“Here,” the curly-haired witch says. He thrusts a little glass vial with a glowing orb swirling inside at Sunwoo. “If you release the charm into your open wardrobe, it should modify all your bottoms to have a tail opening.” 

“Oh shit, thanks hyung,” Sunwoo exclaims. He pockets it hastily and throws his arm around Hyunjae in a bro-y rendition of a hug. “This is great, just send me the receipt yeah?”

Hyunjae waves him off. “No need, a pouch full of your fur next time you shed is fine.” 

Sunwoo grins happily, and with a last chin-nod to Juyeon, scampers out the little shop door.

Hyunjae turns to Juyeon and shoves his hands into the pockets of his robes (which Juyeon is only now realising are a florid green and decorated with animated chicken drumsticks). “Your first client! Good job Juyeon-ah,” he says warmly.

The praise makes Juyeon squirm even though he knows he objectively did _nothing_. To cover up the burgeoning redness on his cheeks, he runs a hand through his hair and mumbles, “So what time should I come in tomorrow? If that works for you?” 

Hyunjae hums contemplatively as he straightens things up around the shop with wandless magic. “I usually open at nine, you can come any time around then. Don’t forget to bring your wand, harnessing pendant, any spellbooks you’re still using and three matcha KitKats,” he rattles off as jars and books fly into place around him. 

Juyeon is typing the list quickly into his phone when the last item makes him stop. “KitKats?” he intones. “Is that for a potion or something?” 

Hyunjae barks out a laugh, and behind him, a last stray receipt shuts itself away into a drawer in his counter. “Nah I’m running low,” he says before peering into a porcelain bowl. “Yep, only two bars left.” He holds it out, as if to let Juyeon confirm that yes, indeed, there are only two KitKats left. 

Before Juyeon can respond, Hyunjae waggles his fingers (and eyebrows) at him playfully. “See ya tomorrow Juyeonie, ‘m gonna go take a nap now.” 

And with that, Hyunjae disappears once more, leaving behind a purple cloud of smoke in the shape of an arrow pointing towards the door. 

Juyeon stares blankly at it for a second before gathering his wits about him. 

_It’s going to be a long and bizarre summer_ , he thinks as he hurries out the door.   
  


~~  
  


It takes two rings for Juyeon’s older brother to pick up the phone.

“Hyung,” Juyeon whines immediately. “You didn’t tell me your friend was a whackjob.”

Sangyeon laughs into the receiver, warm and clear, and Juyeon hears shuffling on the other end. “Hyunjae’s a little eccentric, sure, but he’s a good guy and definitely a good witch.”

Juyeon huffs as he deposits his backpack on the floor and slumps against his front door. His roommates aren’t home yet so they won’t walk in on him being a sorry heap at the entrance of their flat.

“Okay but you couldn’t have picked someone a little more conventional?” Juyeon grumbles. “He _banished_ a client hyung. Just- sent him away like the Magical Constitution is a pile of soggy parchment somewhere in the Black Sea.”

He hears the telltale squeaking sound of Sangyeon leaning back in his desk chair the way he’s wont to do and his brother snickers. “Juyeon-ah, literally no one cares about those laws the way you do,” he says with fond exasperation. “Besides, I think Hyunjae will be good for your education. The academy has always been a little too traditional.”

Juyeon groans. “Yes but- I mean.” He pauses. “Ugh, what coven is he in?”

He can almost _hear_ Sangyeon’s grin when he responds, “He isn’t in one. He left his when we graduated.”

It takes every fibre of Juyeon’s being not to have a conniption right there and then. “ _What?”_ he asks flatly. “How is he- what do you _mean_ he just left- _is nothing sacred anymore?”_ he bemoans. “Who just _leaves_ a coven nowadays, I mean it’s completely-”

“Goodbye Juyeon,” Sangyeon says amusedly, the way he always does when Juyeon goes on one of his rants. 

“I’m making a pros and cons list to decide if this mentorship is a good idea,” Juyeon hisses back. “I’ll do it. I’m pulling out a pen and paper right now, I’m- I’ll do it hyung, don’t test me.”

Sangyeon has the audacity to chuckle. “Sure, sure, I know how you like your lists, sport.”

“Yeah whatever,” Juyeon grumbles before hanging up.   
  


~~  
  


In spite of his reservations (and only after extensive list making where the pros of a mentorship come out _marginally_ the winner), however, Juyeon’s first day with his magical mentor goes reasonably well he thinks. 

Or, at least as well as one might expect when, instead of a traditional wooden wand or even a fancy metal one that some modernists prefer, Hyunjae pulls out a stick of liquorice. 

Sorry — a _half-chewed_ stick of liquorice.

When Hyunjae sees Juyeon staring incredulously at him from the doorway of the shop, he flashes him a grin.

“Morning!” he greets cheerily. His eyes flicker to the mangled sugar wand in his hand when Juyeon does little to respond.

“Lesson one: magic can and should be channeled through anything,” Hyunjae says imperiously, levitating Juyeon’s backpack off his shoulder to place it gently on the small sofa. “Make yourself at home, I’m just going over my expenses right now.”

Juyeon takes the opportunity to peer around the shop, taking in all the things he had missed the day before. He finds a cork display board filled to the brim with polaroid pictures and handwritten notes from Hyunjae’s clients, and the ones from children - “Thank you for finding my Mr. Mitzy hyungnim!” and “I can play with Cookie now cuz you fixed my nose” - in particular make him smile.

He’s wandering past a shelf of assorted brewing ingredients when he chances upon a cauldron tucked lonesomely into a dusty corner of the shop. He’s surprised to see it there, especially when there’s another, newer one emitting a fragrant steam from beside Hyunjae’s workbench. Juyeon supposes business is just _that_ good that Hyunjae has two — after all, they’re notoriously expensive.

He peers into the hefty pewter cauldron and sniffs delicately - just the way Madame Kim had taught them in Brewing class - in the hopes that he’ll be able to impress his new mentor by identifying the mysteriously scarlet potion. Juyeon’s eyes light up when he detects familiar notes of powdered dragon claw and he _thinks_ he spots a beetle’s wing floating in the red viscosity.

“Is this a Draught of Vitality?” he calls excitedly to Hyunjae, heart thrumming in anticipation of praise or at least a mildly impressed expression. Brewing has always been a strong suit of his, and he’s eager to impress his new mentor.

Instead, Hyunjae turns to him and frowns, his head cocked in bewilderment. “Draught of…?” he trails off before stalking over to Juyeon in the corner of the shop. Juyeon steps aside to let Hyunjae peer into the cauldron, and the curly-haired man squints at the concoction for the briefest of moments before his face clears.

“Oh!” he snaps his fingers. The mixture suddenly disappears, and the knobbly basin gleams with a cleanliness only magic can achieve. “That was my kimchi jjigae from, like, a week ago. I totally forgot about it — thanks dude!” He claps Juyeon on the shoulder heartily before hurrying back over to his workbench, leaving Juyeon gaping in his wake. 

He would be more put out by the sheer ridiculousness of his mentor’s habits if not for the fact that that afternoon, Hyunjae gets an urgent international request for a wraith-banishing spell. 

Juyeon is prepared to be alarmed by the effectiveness of a liquorice stick in summoning the sort of power needed for that magic, but then Hyunjae effortlessly bottles up a swirling purple orb of an incantation to be sent to Kyoto with said candy wand and Juyeon is begrudgingly impressed. 

The magic is perfectly executed — something Juyeon confirms later that night when he pores over his textbook. Even the precise colour of the spell, an ‘aubergine’ according to the book, is perfect.

He’d never admit it to anyone, but he _maybe_ looks into the price of liquorice sticks when he drops by the supermarket the next day. Maybe.  
  


~~

  
Regardless of his eccentricities, Hyunjae is nothing but kind and patient.

He looks on in amusement every time Juyeon triple checks a spell in his Tome of Enchantments and waits patiently for Juyeon to muster up the courage to perform the incantation.

See, because the thing is, Juyeon fears performing magic almost as much as he loves being a witch. Which is to say — very, very intensely.

It’s an unfortunate factoid Hyunjae discovers in Juyeon’s second week. Before this, Juyeon had busied himself with strictly non-wandwork business — every nook and cranny of the shop had been cleaned, he had carefully written notes in a cramped hand about every potion Hyunjae has brewed since he started at the shop and even helped strip some willow bark to replenish Hyunjae’s brewing stock.

Two weeks into the summer, his mentor offhandedly asks him to summon a pen from the other room. 

Juyeon freezes. Hyunjae doesn’t notice that Juyeon is unresponsive at first, simply continues reading through a request form with his hand outstretched for the pen. It’s only when Juyeon makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat that Hyunjae looks up. 

“Ju- hey are you okay?” he asks, putting the form down. He swivels in his chair to face Juyeon who is standing, immobile, by the counter.

Juyeon coughs awkwardly and tries his best not to look constipated with angst. “I just- uh, ‘m fine, I just get a bit of-” he clears his throat, “-stage fright with magic.”

Hyunjae’s eyebrows raise in surprise but his expression holds no derision or judgement. 

“Oh,” he murmurs. “That’s okay.” 

He turns fully to lean his elbows on his knees and regards Juyeon with a compassionate sort of warmth. “Not to psychoanalyse you when we’ve only just met, but I think sometimes the military track at the academy pushes its students too hard to be perfect.” Hyunjae sighs and shrugs. “Honestly, that’s why I switched majors.”

And although the sentiment is comforting and Juyeon certainly feels less alone, it doesn’t really leave him with anything actionable. Before he can say anything, however, Hyunjae places a hand on his shoulder.

“Just give it a go, Juyeon-ah,” he says. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Madame Han’s sharp tone echoes in Juyeon’s head — _don’t jab your wand so recklessly Mr. Lee, are you aware that at any time there are no less than ten different ways magic performed poorly can result in death?_

Perhaps Juyeon grimaces or perhaps Hyunjae took Madame Han’s Assault Spells seminar too because he chuckles then and squeezes Juyeon’s arm. 

“I promise you summoning a pen for me will not produce ten separate possible cases of irreversible fatality,” he laughs.

Juyeon doesn’t bother telling him that calling fatality “irreversible” is superfluous - because when is death ever reversible? - and instead focuses on exhaling as he waves his wand. The incantation passes between his lips, and suddenly a fountain pen is whizzing through the air. 

He realises belatedly that he definitely put too much power into the spell because the pen flies like a bullet into the room and, when Hyunjae throws his hand out to catch it, it promptly explodes into an inky mess all over him. 

Juyeon stares in mute horror as Hyunjae blinks at the puddle of blue in his palm. 

“Well,” his mentor says slowly. “Good to know you’re not magically deficient I guess.” There’s a speck of blue ink on his upper lip that looks like a particularly unflattering mole but Juyeon’s silly little brain focuses instead on how pretty the unevenness is between Hyunjae’s top and bottom lips. 

“You’ve got a- uh,” Juyeon gestures flaccidly at Hyunjae’s face. 

The curly haired man shrugs, apparently unconcerned. “Let’s try again,” he says encouragingly. “This time don’t worry so much about the textbook definition of the incantation or the 130 degree arm angle Madame Han’s always going on about.” 

Hyunjae taps Juyeon’s palm and places a hand on his own chest. “You’ve got to _feel_ the magic in your body,” he says emphatically. “The wand is just a conduit — you’re the one with magic in your blood.” 

Juyeon fiddles with his earlobe for a second, processing, before nodding determinedly. 

It takes three more pens - two more of which explode and one that falls limply to the ground short of even reaching the main room - before one sails smoothly into Hyunjae’s hand. The embarrassment of his numerous failures is washed away in part by Hyunjae’s raucous praise, and Juyeon feels a thrill run through him when he thinks about how good the warmth of magic felt pooled in his fingertips.  
  


~~

  
After that day, Hyunjae forbids Juyeon from bringing his spellbooks to the shop. One time, Juyeon tries to sneak them in but Hyunjae seems to sniff them out with a bloodhound-esque ferocity — Juyeon’s books end up stuck to the ceiling for the rest of the day much to his own dismay.

“C’mon they’re not that bad,” he entreats for the sixth time that morning. “It’s my fault I’m stiff, I just get all nervous — don’t blame the books!” 

Hyunjae fixes Juyeon with a stern expression that manages to look reasonably scary in spite of the mass of curls spilling over his forehead from underneath his witch’s hat. 

“It is absolutely the books’ fault, Juyeon-ah,” he says stoutly. “The academy’s made you too reliant on those dusty things. You’re better off without them.”

Juyeon would loathe to admit it, but he spends the rest of the morning sulking.

In those first few days of feeling utterly untethered by the solid weight of his textbooks and tomes, he shies away from doing magic. If Hyunjae notices, he certainly doesn’t say anything, simply brushes over it when Juyeon dawdles over his spell-casting tasks.

It’s the fourth day of being bookless when Hyunjae announces he’s “sending the cavalry in”.

And by that, he means aiming his golf-pencil-wand at Juyeon and turning his clothes into a bastardised version of a blow-up sumo suit. Juyeon leaps out of his seat in alarm with a shout, but when he finally processes what has transpired, he fixes Hyunjae with an unamused look.

“Change me back,” he says (he unequivocally does _not_ whine. Never.).

Hyunjae leans back in his chair and smiles pleasantly. “Change yourself back. C’mon, this is a basic spell reversal Juyeon.”

Juyeon finds it takes a lot out of him not to stamp his feet. 

“Seriously, I’ll knock things over like this,” he complains. “This isn’t funny, hyung.” 

Hyunjae shrugs disinterestedly and moves to rise from the barstool at the counter. “Do what you want, no stress. I’m gonna go do a portal sealing but feel free to stay here if you don’t feel comfortable going outside like this.”

Juyeon’s mouth falls open because a portal sealing is, like, the coolest thing ever and every single cell in his body desperately wants to watch Hyunjae do it if he could just—

He takes a deep breath. _I’m the one with magic in my blood_ he thinks.

With perhaps a little too much hesitance and finger trembling, Juyeon manages to wave his wand and say the incantation - _sans Tome of Enchantments! -_ that reverses a spell. For a second, his sumo suit stays, intact and painfully voluminous, but then it begins to change.

Sure, Juyeon’s textbooks say that a spell reversal charm should work in a matter of seconds and Juyeon’s own casting takes quadruple that, but by the time his clothes are back to normal, he can’t help but feel a balloon of pride swelling in his stomach like a bubble of warmth.

“I did it!” he laughs incredulously. “I totally- wow, I did it! Did you see that?! Man.” Juyeon grins and spins in a circle as he admires his plain t-shirt and basketball shorts. 

When he looks up, Hyunjae is smiling softly at him. It somehow makes it all a little bit better if that’s possible.  
  


~~

  
Juyeon is sitting cross-legged, hunched over his textbook as he reads through a dense paragraph on the properties of a spirit summoning spell when Kevin announces drowsily, “I love lazy Saturdays.”

Juyeon’s flatmate stretches on the sofa, his neko ears twitching when he gets to the most satisfying point of the extension, but Juyeon spares him nary a glance. Kevin’s tail swishes out and pokes Jacob, who’s laid out beside him, in the ribs. “Don’t you love lazy Saturdays?” 

Jacob groans a little when Kevin’s tail tickles along his chin and bats the fur away. “Yes dear,” he responds with just enough weariness to punctuate his point and with his eyes still glued to his phone. Kevin snickers and his tail sways elegantly through the air to his other side and pokes Juyeon’s cheek.

“See how nice lazy Saturdays are?” 

Juyeon’s eyebrow twitches at the pointed question and he looks up from his textbook and notes. 

“Kevin,” he says patiently. “Just say what you actually want to say.” Juyeon pauses, then bites his lip to hide his grin. “No need to pussyfoot around the subject.”

Jacob bursts out into a chuckle and nudges Juyeon’s knee good-naturedly with his toe while Kevin sniffs daintily. 

“Lowbrow humour. I just think you should stop studying and relax for once,” the supernatural says while flicking his boyfriend firmly on the forehead. It’s a request Juyeon has heard every weekend since the three of them moved in together their first year at the academy four years ago. 

Historically, Juyeon has always said no, that he needs to study more if he’s going to get this new spell perfect or that brewing recipe memorised. The refusal is on the tip of his tongue this time too, except he suddenly remembers Hyunjae’s words when he'd walked Juyeon out the shop the day before, his arm slung familiarly over Juyeon’s shoulders.

_“Don’t go over-studying this weekend. Magic is about more than books y’hear?”_

Juyeon gnaws on a piece of dead skin on his bottom lip for a second - _he should probably get a dry skin remedy from Hyunjae on Monday -_ before nodding slowly. 

“Yeah, you’re right. I can chill for the rest of the day,” he says. Juyeon shuts his books with a snap, and feigns nonchalance in the face of Kevin and Jacob’s gaping mouths.

“Huh?” his roommates gawk at him with matching bewilderment on their handsome faces.

Juyeon grins. “So what does ‘chilling’ entail precisely?”  
  


~~

  
After his first weekend in years of lazing around doing quite literally nothing with his flatmates, Juyeon walks into Hyunjae’s shop with the pliancy of caramel left out under the sun too long. He smiles indulgently at the dusty tarp hoisted inelegantly over the shop’s sign that bothered him so just four days ago, and even deigns to grin at the jarring eighties rock music blasting from behind the door. 

When he walks in, Hyunjae waves at him amidst a thick sheet of steam billowing out of his cauldron. 

“Hey!” he calls. “C’mere, can you stir this for me? I’ve been holding my pee in for, like, an hour.”

Juyeon grins and strides quickly to take over the ladle. Hyunjae squeezes his bicep gratefully before disappearing into thin air. 

As Juyeon stirs the ladle in the standard three-times-counterclockwise-twice-clockwise motion every witch worth their salt knows to do, he observes the clarity of the brew in the cauldron. Only a truly excellent brewer would be able to achieve such lucidity in their potions, and Juyeon can’t help but lean a little closer to observe the way the periwinkle liquid ripples against his wooden spoon.

A second later, Hyunjae audibly pops back into the room.

“Thanks, I thought I was going to die in a puddle of-”

Juyeon coughs quickly to interrupt his mentor. “Yep, happy to help,” he says pointedly. Hyunjae chuckles and takes the spoon back from him. 

“You did a good job! The brew looks great,” Hyunjae admires as he resumes stirring. Juyeon has yet to get used to the slew of praise that Hyunjae always bestows upon him, so different from the professors back at the academy. It makes something warm tighten up low in his sternum, and he can’t help the way the corners of his mouth lift up.

“Didn’t really do anything,” he mumbles and looks away, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Hyunjae look up to smile warmly at him. It makes his chest clench and his palms feel a little clammy.

Hyunjae swipes his fingers through the steam still billowing like an overly effusive chimney and vanishes it, breathing a sigh of relief right after. 

“Nice, it was getting kinda hard to breathe,” he mutters happily, peering into his cauldron. With the fog gone, Juyeon can finally see Hyunjae clearly, and the sight makes him pause.

Hyunjae’s normally curly hair is positively explosive atop his head, each golden brown tendril standing straight up as if lifted by an invisible string. Juyeon squints a little tactlessly perhaps, and Hyunjae laughs.

“I spelled them like that. Anti-gravity charm,” Juyeon’s mentor says. “Cute huh?”

And yeah, he absolutely looks a dictionary full of positive words more than ‘cute’, but Juyeon’s silly pea brain can only function so far as to say bluntly, “Anti-gravity charms are illegal according to Section F, Article 346 of the Magical Constitution.”

Hyunjae blinks at him, and Juyeon feels a hot flush creep up his face. He stumbles to add, “I mean-” 

“How do you know so many Articles in the fucking Constitution, Juyeon-ah?” Hyunjae asks dryly. 

Juyeon’s blush intensifies.

“I memorised all seven hundred,” he whispers, eyes fixed firmly on a spot left of Hyunjae’s face. 

There’s a silence broken only by the sound of Hyunjae’s ladle hitting the sides of the pewter cauldron as he continues stirring placidly. Juyeon sees Hyunjae’s lips twitching as if he’s holding back a smile. Just when he thinks he might _die_ of embarrassment, Hyunjae murmurs serenely, “Alright then.”

A second later, Hyunjae’s curls fall back into their usual messy mop, no longer held upright by physics-defying magic. He continues stirring, the brew now a mid-toned indigo, and says under his breath, “Still think it looked good.”

Juyeon has to bite his tongue violently hard to choke back the reflexive vehement agreement. Instead, with a mouth that tastes suspiciously like blood, he busies himself by preparing the vial for the potion. 

In his peripheral vision, he sees Hyunjae’s hair bounce as he animatedly wafts the brew’s scent towards his face. One of Hyunjae’s brown curls seems not to have gotten the message that the spell is off, and remains upright and swaying in the air. Juyeon’s hand itches to reach out and tug at it gently just to make Hyunjae smile the smile that produces darling little crinkles under his pretty eyes, warm and endlessly endearing in the way it makes Juyeon feel at home and breathless all at once, and—

_Ah crap._   
  


~~

  
The second Juyeon walks through the front door, he knows he’s made a grave mistake. He should’ve stood outside for a second and done some breathing exercises, or maybe just faked his own death. 

The moment the door swings open, Kevin bolts up from where he’s laying on his front on the sofa and stares at Juyeon. Hard.

“You’re different,” his roommate says. Kevin’s dark eyes narrow. “You’re…”

Juyeon stands, petrified in the doorway as Kevin stalks closer, leaping agilely from the sofa to the armchair, dark tail waving languidly in the air. 

Kevin wiggles his nose and inhales sharply before his eyes fly open. “You have a crush,” he declares incredulously.

Juyeon gapes at his friend, then throws his arms in the air. “How could you _possibly_ know that Kevin?” he exclaims exasperatedly while Kevin crows with delight.

“Jacob!” he yells down the hallway. “Come quick! Juyeon has a _cruuuuuuush.”_

Jacob comes ambling down the corridor, still dressed in his own work clothes, and catapults himself at Juyeon who barely manages to keep them both upright. 

“Exciting!” Jacob says happily. “Who’s your mystery being?” 

Juyeon resists the urge to shove his friend off of him - because it’s Jacob and who shoves _Jacob?_ \- simply settles instead for turning beet red under Kevin’s calculating gaze. “Seriously Kev, how did you-”

Kevin scoffs and drapes his arms over the back of the sofa to smile sweetly at Juyeon. “Neko nose,” he says. “I could smell your pining pheromones from a mile away, bud.”

Juyeon blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it. 

Jacob and Kevin have twin innocent expressions on their handsome faces, fond and more than a little amused. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Juyeon says gruffly before disappearing into thin air. When he reappears in his bedroom, warm and comforting and without his friends’ discerning gazes, he hears them laughing to each other in the living room. 

God damn menaces.   
  


~~

  
Later that night, Juyeon realises he performed magic unassisted and inadvertently, without the usual hooplah of panic that normally ensues. 

As he blinks at his dark ceiling, moonlight shuttering through the window in spite of Seoul’s terrible light pollution, he realises why Sangyeon had picked Hyunjae to mentor him. 

He really has done wonders for Juyeon’s spell-casting.

Still, Juyeon wonders if his dear older brother had known this would happen, whatever ‘this’ is — the sweetness in Juyeon’s chest when Hyunjae encourages him, the rise in his confidence, the fact that Juyeon suddenly finds himself wondering what it would be like to hold Hyunjae’s hand. 

He falls asleep shortly thereafter to the memory of bright laughter that seems to fill the crevices of his body with sherbet flavoured sunshine.   
  


~~

  
Juyeon is sorting the bottled charms display when the doorbell of the shop tinkles, announcing the presence of a new customer. With a smile on his face, he turns around, all ready to be the nice and polite witch his parents had raised him to be. 

He’s met with the sight of a rather furious gnome, whose small stature is more than made up for by his enormous pointy hat that jerks precariously with every furious shake of the supernatural’s fist.

“You!” he yells. “Is this your shop? How are you guys going to call yourselves a business and not even have a sign for your store?”

Juyeon shrinks back, entirely unused to confrontation. “Sir, I-”

“I’ve been running around all morning trying to figure out which storefront you were!” the gnome continues, enraged. Maester Choi’s voice echoes in Juyeon’s head: _gnomes are infamous for their bad tempers and have attempted to instigate numerous inter-species wars to the Council of Supernaturals’ great amusement throughout the 1900s._

He’s about to tentatively offer up a condolence, maybe even throw in a free bunch of dried lavender for the gentleman’s troubles, when Hyunjae suddenly pops into the room just by Juyeon’s elbow.

“Hello Park Youngsik-ssi,” he says pleasantly with an enormous canvas tote bag balanced precariously in his arms. “Thank you so much for coming in. I have your order ready right here.” Hyunjae thrusts the bag forward, and from where he’s standing, Juyeon can see a number of enchanted pickaxes and protection garb jumbled willy-nilly on top of one another.

The gnome blinks then, before the furious expression suddenly clears off his gnarled face. As placid as ever, he smiles and takes the bag from Hyunjae’s hand. 

“Thank you so much,” the customer hums, serenity oozing from every pore. “This will be excellent on my trip. I really appreciate you taking online orders.”

And with that, the gnome bows as best he can with his arms full of enchanted mining equipment, then ambles out the door in a manner Juyeon can only describe as _jaunty_.

As soon as the door closes, Juyeon whips around to stare at his mentor. “How did you- I mean, he was so-”

Hyunjae grins, then pulls a candy necklace out of his shirt. Juyeon is bewildered for half a second before he sees the tell-tale signs of magic floating around each sugar bead. Cornflower and pale pistachio — a soothing charm. 

Juyeon’s mouth falls open.

“Isn’t that,” he pauses. Scratches his head. “Isn’t that kind of unethical? To wear a mood-setting charm around a customer?”

Hyunjae shrugs. “This morning, I was checking what would happen today in the Basin and I saw our esteemed customer elbowing you in the gut, so I figured I’d get ahead of the situation.”

Juyeon opens his mouth to argue but Hyunjae continues, “Besides, one _could_ say I was just wearing it when Park Youngsik-ssi _happened_ to come in. It’s not like I knew he was going to be here and purposefully set about to manipulate him.”

Juyeon’s face scrunches up. “But you literally just said-”

Hyunjae halts him with a raised hand. Waves it about in the air. _I accept no criticisms_ materialises in sparkling fireworks above his head, and then Juyeon’s mentor is wandering off with a grin on his face and a whistle on his lips.  
  


~~

  
A number of days later, Juyeon and Hyunjae are sipping tea during a lull in the day - the odd, mushroom-y tea has weirdly grown on Juyeon since his first day over a month ago - when Hyunjae snaps his fingers.

“Juyeon-ah, remember that customer who came in for the enchanted mining equipment?” 

Juyeon glances at Hyunjae wryly over the rip of his teacup and asks, “The one whose mood you semi-unethically altered literally three days ago? Yeah, what about him?”

Hyunjae levels a flat stare at him. “If you can’t cite a law against mood- _setting_ charms in your beloved Constitution, I don’t want to hear it,” he deadpans. 

Seeing Juyeon’s suitably abashed expression, Hyunjae goes on with a brighter tone, “Anyway, remember how he was saying he couldn’t find the store cause we didn’t have a sign up?”

Juyeon perks up at this and sets his cup down. “Are you finally taking that ugly tarp off?” he asks, and Hyunjae has the audacity to look a little offended before sniffing out a ‘yes’.

“I need help coming up with a name,” Hyunjae says contemplatively now. “The previous owner just called this place The Repository — which, ew what does that even mean-” Juyeon doesn’t interrupt with a definition because he doesn’t think Hyunjae is actually asking “-so I’ve been workshopping a couple different ones.”

His mentor holds his hand out and a coffee-stained piece of paper appears in his palm.

Juyeon looks down at it and grimaces. Scrawled across the page in an ungainly hand are phrases like “ _Hyunjae’s Hippity Hoppity Hoard”_ and “ _Hoot and Holler for Hyunjae”_ , and Juyeon isn’t saying he’s embarrassed for his mentor - friend? - but he’s definitely a little embarrassed for him.

In the most inoffensive tone he can manage, Juyeon asks carefully, “Are you committed to the alliteration?”

This makes Hyunjae glance at Juyeon out of the side of his eyes. He squints discerningly at the younger witch, and Juyeon keeps his face pleasantly impassive. 

“Yes,” Hyunjae finally says. He stuffs his hand into the pocket of his robes - today a punchy shade of carrot orange decorated with frowning cookies - and pulls out a toffee. It’s a little dusty and wrapped in wax paper, and Juyeon’s quite certain it’s the sort of sweet little old ladies carry in their purses in the West, but his mentor simply transforms it into a pen before picking up the paper once more.

“I kind of like this one,” he murmurs thoughtfully. Juyeon leans a little closer to look at the name being pointed at, determinedly ignoring the way he can feel the warmth of Hyunjae’s thigh pressed against his this way. 

“Hyunjae’s Hocuspocus, Hijinks and Hexes,” he reads. Juyeon bites the inside of his cheek. “You know Hocus-pocus needs a dash in the middle right?” 

Hyunjae shrugs and sucks on his pen without looking at Juyeon. “Language is fluid, Juyeon-ah,” he mumbles distractedly. “I just think there needs to be a last word in there like…”

“House?” Juyeon offers. “Er…Home?” It’s embarrassing how he can’t think of any other words starting with H.

Hyunjae nibbles on the pen for a little longer before his eyes light up. “ _Hemporium,_ ” he declares with delighted relish. “Like emporium but with a H.”

Juyeon’s face crumples into a bewildered frown. “Are you planning on selling hemp here, hyung? Because that’s what people are going to think. Also that’s not a real word.”

“Heck ‘em,” Hyunjae says happily, scribbling that godforsaken non-word down. “Hyunjae’s Hocuspocus, Hijinks and Hexes Hemporium,” the curly haired witch reads aloud. “It’s _perfect_.”

So sure, Juyeon has to bite his lip into a bloody mess to prevent himself from pointing out that language really isn’t fluid the way Hyunjae is making it out to be, but the brilliant joy shining from Hyunjae’s dark, pretty eyes when he looks over at Juyeon somehow makes him think it’s all very worth it.  
  


~~

  
The next day, he and Hyunjae levitate the sign they’d spent all night painting onto the roof of the shop. 

Hyunjae had insisted they paint it by hand for “that rustic feel, Juyeon-ah”, but Juyeon isn’t personally quite convinced teal and neon yellow are even remotely rustic. Even so, when the sign finally settles thunderously into place on top of the store, Hyunjae prances around in a celebratory jig, hollering so loudly that a few people look over at him crossly.

He runs back into the store and emerges moments later with cold beers and two ice lollies — strawberry for him and mango for Juyeon. Condensation trickles down the green glass and onto Juyeon’s wrists as he valiantly tries to keep the same from happening to his lolly. Hyunjae’s tongue sticks to his because he doesn’t heed Juyeon’s warning to _wait for it to defrost a little, hyung._

The late summer sunshine is amber and flax in Hyunjae’s curly brown hair, molten as it melts over his delicate features, and _yeah_ , Juyeon has a big, fucking crush.   
  


~~

  
“Hmph.” 

Juyeon barely hears the slight huff over the sound of his chopping knife clattering efficiently away at the cutting board. He has to dice a whole kilo of glazed billywigs to replenish the stockroom of brewing ingredients, and his eyes have formed a sort of tunnel vision with regard to the pile of gummy purple oblongs under his fingers. 

“Hmph.” 

The exhale comes again, a little louder this time, and Juyeon blinks in faint amusement. Hyunjae is sitting only a few metres away, staring fixedly at him while feigning an air of nonchalance. Juyeon wonders briefly how long the other witch can go before finally saying what it is he wants.

“ _Hmph._ ” 

As a favour to them both, Juyeon breaks first. Without looking up, he asks mildly, “What do you need, hyung? Attention?”

When he does cast his eyes over the room, he sees Hyunjae looking a little flustered where he’s sat at the small dining table. 

“Yah!” he exclaims indignantly, but then he sidles up to Juyeon. “I’m bored,” he whines. “You’ve been chopping those things for an age and business is slow today and I frankly think I’m wasting away.” 

Juyeon chuckles as he lays his knife down. “Well if you helped me, maybe things would go faster,” he points out. Hyunjae rolls his eyes at him and hops up onto the counter, sending a few billywigs flying. With a lazy flick of his fingers, he levitates them back to the board, but not before making them dance in a marching line over the counter. 

“I’m your mentor, this is me mentoring you,” Hyunjae retorts. “And look how well you’re learning, the diced bits are only two times bigger than they need to be now.”

Juyeon blushes, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he mutters. “My hands are too big to hold them down properly.” 

Hyunjae smiles at him - and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but there’s something more than fondness there Juyeon thinks - then slides off the counter. 

“Don’t apologise, you just gotta think outside the box,” he says. He grabs his wand - today it’s a soy sauce-stained takeout chopstick - from behind his ear, and before Juyeon can protest, he’s waving it at Juyeon’s hands. 

“Wha-!” Juyeon’s aborted shout is cut short when he realises his hands are shrinking. He stares, utterly dumbfounded, as they reduce in size, and then Hyunjae grabs his right wrist and waves it around excitedly.

“See? Problem solving!” he declares happily. “Now you can hold all the billywigs you want.” 

Juyeon smiles incredulously back and finds himself marvelling at Hyunjae’s spell-casting once again as he observes the way his hands look in Hyunjae’s, astoundingly smaller than his mentor’s petite ones.

“How do they feel?” Hyunjae asks. “No nerve damage I hope.” Juyeon grins and shakes his head. 

“Nah, they feel fine. Thanks,” he says. He resumes chopping with a smile on his face while Hyunjae casually tears into a bag of crisps and re-seats himself on the counter. The rest of the dicing goes by much faster now that Juyeon’s hands aren’t half the size of the chopping board, and if Hyunjae surreptitiously flicks his fingers to split any extra large pieces, well, Juyeon isn’t complaining.

When he finishes, he has red indents in his palms and his fingertips are stained purple but he’s satisfied with a job well done. Hyunjae crows in victory and whisks the pile of neat purple cubes into a clean jar before sending it zooming back into the pantry cupboard.

“Nice,” he exclaims. “Now we can hang out!”

Juyeon stops him with jazz hands to the face. “Uh, hyung? I kinda need my hands to go back to normal.” 

Hyunjae’s nose scrunches and he bares his teeth. “Oops.” Impulsively, he grabs Juyeon’s hands in his and Juyeon’s mouth falls open at the seemingly intimate physical contact. 

“Here you can practice the charm,” Hyunjae says. Juyeon only half listens as Hyunjae explains what the incantation is and how to perform the spell wandlessly, too focused is he on the way Hyunjae’s thumb runs circles thoughtlessly against his knuckles. 

After a moment’s silence, Hyunjae nudges him with an encouraging smile. “Go on then,” he says. “I can probably reverse 97% of the mistakes you might make.”

Juyeon doesn’t have the mental fortitude to tell him that the remaining three percent of irreversible spell damage is _not_ comforting.

He squeezes his eyes shut as he mutters the spell, hoping against hope that he’ll still have hands by the time it’s over. When he opens them again, he finds that they’re back to their normal size, almost engulfing Hyunjae’s delicate ones in his palms. 

“See? You were great!” Hyunjae says encouragingly, squeezing as best he can now that Juyeon’s hands are almost twice the size of his. 

“Yep.” Juyeon’s throat is dry as he regards Hyunjae with an apprehensive sort of anticipation. 

A strange undercurrent fills the air then, a nervous tension that makes the hairs on Juyeon’s neck prickle. Suddenly the room seems a little too warm and Hyunjae a little too close, and all Juyeon can focus on is the feeling of their linked hands and the little freckle on Hyunjae’s nose. 

“My hands’re so big because my mother’s great grandmother was a Yeti,” he blurts out unthinkingly out of sheer nervousness. The moment dissipates promptly as Hyunjae’s mouth falls open.

“No _way_ , that’s so fucking cool!” he cries, dropping their contact. A shockwave of magic balloons into the room following his outburst but Hyunjae pays it no mind as he babbles on. “I thought for the longest time that I had some elf blood in me - cause that would’ve been so sick y’know? - but turns out it was goblin all along. Man, when I tell you I was disappointed, I think I moped for weeks...”

Juyeon lets the sound of Hyunjae’s excited rambling wash over him as he scrambles to regroup emotionally. It doesn’t help that he can still feel Hyunjae’s fingers twisted against his like a brand, hot and laden with tenderness.  
  


~~

  
September first - what used to be his first day back at the academy - passes. This year, Juyeon, Jacob and Kevin don’t don their ratty backpacks and new notebooks and traipse over to campus; no, they hunker down in their flat and pull out every textbook they’ve ever had to buy and begin to study.

September first is three weeks from the autumn equinox, and therefore three weeks from their final exam.

The carefree atmosphere of their flat seems to disappear in an instant. Even though the sun still shines as brightly outside - summer seems to run late this year - a quiet tension settles into their bones and the dusty crevices of their living room they’d been too busy to vacuum. 

Juyeon stops cooking dinner and starts making shittier versions of kimbap and fried rice and udon. Jacob stops tidying around the house and the piles of books grow ever-taller in higgledy piggledy piles. Kevin — well, Kevin stops gathering up the fur he invariably sheds, and occasionally, Juyeon will jump two feet in the air because he thinks there’s an enormous bug on the floor but it’s really just a neat little bundle of Kevin’s dark fur. 

To conclude: everything is kind of chaotic.

When Juyeon shows up to the Hemporium after the first weekend of serious studying, he’s grumpy and on edge. Everything seems to set him off — the way Hyunjae doesn’t sort his brewing ingredients in alphabetical order, the way the new shipment of scrolls is still in the corner of the shop even though Juyeon has reminded Hyunjae three times now that it needs to be sorted, and even the music Hyunjae picks to play on his gramophone.

Perhaps Hyunjae notices this, because he grows increasingly playful as if in an effort to lift Juyeon’s mood. 

It doesn’t work.

Still, it takes three days for Juyeon to snap. 

It’s when they’re preparing a brew - a temporary spell repellant to protect the drinker from being cursed, exactly the kind of thing Juyeon might get tested on - that the pressure in Juyeon’s skull comes to a head. 

Hyunjae is chopping ingredients willy nilly, hardly even paying attention to the order they need to be thrown in, and dancing to an absurdly insipid pop song. 

He’s about to toss a handful of petrified beetle wings into the cauldron when Juyeon catches his wrist in an iron grip, his right hand still stirring steadily.

“That doesn’t go in until the mermaid’s tears do, hyung,” Juyeon grits out, his temple throbbing with something tighter than exhaustion. 

Hyunjae grins, but his fingers unclasp around the ingredients anyway, eliciting an appalled gasp from Juyeon. “Says who?” he goads pleasantly.

“Says the book!” Juyeon cries out as he gesticulates to the thick tome. “It literally says it right here, ‘after tipping in the tears, then-’”

“Yes but I feel like this is right and who cares about books anyway?” 

No sooner has the question left his mouth than Juyeon snaps furiously, “ _I care!_ I care about the fucking books!” 

There’s an eerie silence that follows his outburst where Hyunjae does little more than stare at Juyeon, and it makes frustration prick at his eyes. 

“Fuck I’m so- so sorry,” Juyeon stutters. He drops the ladle and stumbles away, running a hand agitatedly through his own hair. “I should go, fuck, I’m so sorry hyung I didn’t mean to-”

A pale hand catches his elbow, and Juyeon looks up to see Hyunjae smiling at him gently. After casting a stasis charm on the cauldron, he leads Juyeon to the sofa and pushes him to sit. In the blink of an eye, a mug is floating serenely in front of Juyeon’s face, a teapot already depositing the familiar herbaceous drink into it. 

“Have some tea, Juyeon-ah,” Hyunjae encourages. “You’re looking a little flushed, hm?”

Juyeon shoots him a grateful but worn smile and takes the mug in his hands. The bizarre flavour of the tea has grown on him this last month, and he sips at it gratefully in spite of how hot it is outside the shop. 

“What’s up?” Hyunjae asks at length, when Juyeon has finished half his mug. 

Juyeon sighs and puts the cup down before toeing his shoes off and curling his knees up into his chest. “Exams are in two and a half weeks,” he mumbles. “N’ I’m scared I’ll fail.”

Hyunjae hums in understanding and scrunches up right beside Juyeon, shoes still on. He leans his head on the back of the sofa and holds his hand out. When Juyeon just stares at it stupidly, he huffs out a half laugh and grabs Juyeon’s hand himself.

“Is this okay?” Hyunjae asks. Juyeon nods, a shuttered, awkward thing. Hyunjae smiles, satisfied. “I’m sorry you’re stressed. I...”

He trails off, turning over the words. Juyeon expects Hyunjae to say something he himself would say to a friend in crisis — _you’re doing great, be kind to yourself, tomorrow is another day_. Sweet, comforting words that are sometimes platitudinous but still balmy to chafed feelings. 

Instead, Hyunjae says, “I can close an hour early every day and we can practice spells? Or we could go through all the brews you might be tested on?” He grins self-deprecatingly. “I’ll even let you bring your books back.”

A rush of warmth fills Juyeon so quickly that it seems to flood every nerve-ending in his body. Hyunjae, who doesn’t use pretty phrases or emotional expressions, cares for Juyeon in the only way he knows how — through action.

Juyeon smiles and picks absent-mindedly at the cuticle of his right thumb. “That’d be really nice, if- if you don’t mind that is,” he adds hurriedly. 

Hyunjae huffs out an exasperated ‘don’t mind at all’ before clasping his hand over the nape of Juyeon’s neck, massaging it casually for a second. They settle into a comfortable silence, shoulders just a hair's-breadth away from touching, and Juyeon feels inexplicably homey in this shop he’s worked in for just shy of two months, beside a man who makes entire stars dim when he laughs.  
  


~~

  
So Hyunjae helps. He makes dancing flash cards pop up out of nowhere throughout the work day to quiz Juyeon on his Old Korean for spells, closes the shop early so that Juyeon can practice a brew under his watchful eye and is altogether very, very helpful. It’s simultaneously excellent for Juyeon’s education and terrible for his heart. 

Because now it’s hard — it’s hard for Juyeon to separate his feelings of admiration for Hyunjae as a mentor and friend of his older brother’s and his feelings of mortifying adoration and attraction to the man. 

Sometimes, he’ll catch the way Hyunjae looks grinning at a young customer who comes in to have their lost toy found, or sees the way he looks throwing his head back in laughter when Sunwoo pops in to hang out for a bit, and Juyeon’s heart will clench so quickly, so painfully that it almost makes him breathless.

The summer is rapidly coming to a close. If all goes well with his exams, Juyeon will have a number of job offers on the table, all hopefully for posts in combative magic, and Juyeon will have to leave _Hyunjae’s Hocuspocus, Hijinks and Hexes Hemporium._

It’s an embarrassingly scary and melancholy thought.

The worst part is, the stress of exam preparation seems to do little to detract from the strength of his burgeoning feelings for Hyunjae. 

In fact, it’s getting kind of inconvenient, this pining thing. 

One time Juyeon walks into the shop and he sees that Hyunjae has enchanted a ratty looking mop to float and is in the midst of _waltzing_ with it when Juyeon shows up. 

The curly haired witch flashes him a grin over the worn red handle and remarks with sparkling eyes, “Double whammy, Juyeon-ah. The floors get cleaned and I get to practice my chassé.”

In the background, Tchaikovsky plays thunderously over Hyunjae’s enchanted gramophone. Instead of feeling perplexed or even grossed out by the fact that the floors are sopping wet with a muddy sort of mop-water, Juyeon is only hopelessly endeared.

It’s an absolute mess.  
  


~~

  
On the day of the exam, Juyeon, Jacob and Kevin exchange grim looks of determination before entering the testing hall. It’ll be a gruelling day of spells, written essays and brewing morning to night, and Juyeon wonders briefly if this is what it feels like to go to war.

_(He’s sure it’s not, and feels momentarily guilty to all the veterans out there. Sort of.)_

By the end of the day, the sun is setting low on the horizon, glazing the city in a marmalade glow. 

Juyeon and his flatmates spill out of the examination halls, exhausted but giddy with relief — they’re _done_. Fully fledged witches now. The scores have yet to come in, so it’s hard to celebrate as of yet, but four years of learning have come to this.

He’s not too embarrassed to admit that his eyes sting with relieved tears as he, Kevin and Jacob dance around the entrance of the academy in a tight circle of limbs and laughter. When they finally break apart, Kevin runs a hand through Juyeon’s hair as he leans his head on Jacob’s shoulder.

“Wanna all get dinner?” he asks happily. Juyeon smiles at his two friends - his _best_ friends - and shakes his head. 

“You guys go ahead. Maybe a movie after though?” he says. They deserve some time alone, he thinks, and besides…“I gotta go do a thing.”

Jacob and Kevin exchange knowing looks before beaming and waving him off. Juyeon shakes his hand erratically in their direction, and then he’s taking off at a run, down the streets past his school and to a T-spot where he can teleport to Hyunjae’s shop.  
  


~~

  
The lights are all off when he gets there, understandably since Hyunjae has predictably closed the shop an hour ago at 7 PM when he usually does. Even so, Juyeon takes the liberty of letting himself in and closes the door quietly behind him.

“Hyung?” he calls. “You home?”

The light at the top of the stairs leading to Hyunjae’s flat flicks on. A second later, Hyunjae is teleporting half into his own cauldron given the speed with which he appears before Juyeon.

“You finished!” he shouts happily. Suddenly, arms are being thrown around Juyeon’s shoulders and his nose is buried in an explosion of curls. “I’m so proud of you! How do you feel? We have to celebrate!” 

Juyeon laughs aloud at the rapid-fire speech, and his arms tighten around Hyunjae’s slim frame affectionately.

“I feel good — really good actually,” he says quietly. Hyunjae pulls back to look him over, eyes sparkling with a sort of joy that comes from somewhere deep within. Juyeon exhales, feeling like it’s the first real breath he’s taken in a month, and adds, “I think I did well.”

Hyunjae bares his teeth happily. “Of _course_ you did,” he exclaims. “There was never any doubt that you wouldn’t ace it.”

Juyeon grins happily back, suddenly feeling impossibly light; so light in fact, that he wonders for one wild moment if Hyunjae is wearing one of his mood-setting charms again. “I mean- I don’t know about acing anything but I got to take my brew home after and- I dunno, I think it went pretty well?”

He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a vial of clear liquid. “It was a random prompt that we each got assigned, and then to qualify for honours we had to make it visually indistinguishable.” Juyeon swirls the brew about critically. “I don’t think I managed to get the clarity quite right but-”

“It looks fucking _sick!_ ” Hyunjae cries. He grabs it from Juyeon’s hand and puts the little glass bottle up to the light. “I can hardly tell anything about it — you did so well, Juyeon-ah.”

Pleasure and warmth zips through Juyeon as quick as a horned whizzfly in mating season, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep the smile tugging at his lips in check.

“Thanks,” he says softly, unable to hold the giddiness out of his voice.

Hyunjae looks away from the potion and smiles at him again. Then— 

“Let’s see how it tastes,” he says, before promptly uncorking the thing and downing it in one.

“Hyung!” Juyeon exclaims, alarmed. “What the fuck are you- _stop swallowing for fuck’s sake!”_

Hyunjae simply winks at him, lips still sealed tightly around the rim of the vial, before finally finishing the thing. He grins and smacks his mouth a couple times, tongue catching a stray droplet on the corner of his lips.

“Oh lighten up, Juyeon,” he laughs, nudging him with his elbow. “I know they don’t make you guys brew hazardous things for those exams, I’ll be fine!” 

Juyeon’s head is buzzing and throbbing with a sort of sense or premonition that, according to Sangyeon, runs in their family — some distant aunt was a famed Seer or something like that. Either way, now he swallows thickly before croaking, “You- uh-”

“Hey, you’re glowing pink! That’s fun,” Hyunjae notes surprisedly. “What-”

His mouth abruptly clamps shut. He sucks his cheeks in and narrows his eyes. Coughs.

“Did I just swallow a Discernment Elixir?” he intones. 

Juyeon rocks back on his heels, eyes still impossibly wide as he stares at his mentor-turned-friend-turned-enormous-crush. “Yeeeeeep,” he confirms stiltedly.

Hyunjae nods, eyes just as saucer-like now as he digests this information. “Right,” he says. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Cool.”

Juyeon nods right back.

“So, discerning my emotions—?” Hyunjae checks.

“Yep.”

A pause.

“And the pink means—?”

“Mmmhm.”

A shorter silence, mouth pinched. 

“So you know I have feelings for y—?”

“Uh-huh.” 

The two of them nod at each other like kitschy bobblehead figurines on a taxi dashboard. The quiet that engulfs them seems impenetrable, and Juyeon begins to feel discomfort itch at his skin even as his heart races a mile a minute. 

Because yeah, he’s fucking _thrilled_ that Hyunjae feels the same way about him, is absolutely ecstatic that this cooler, handsomer, magical human holds even an ounce of the same emotions Juyeon has grappled with the last month for him, but—

But Juyeon isn’t the kind of person, isn’t the kind of witch, to rush headlong into things. This isn’t what he does, especially when he wasn’t _planning_ on finding out Hyunjae returned his not-so-unrequited feelings. He hasn’t even had time to make a pros and cons list for all the prospective outcomes of their actions, and what on God’s green earth is he supposed to do without a pros and cons list?

So Juyeon doesn’t do what his movie-self would do, which is sweep Hyunjae up into a kiss or declare his own feelings — no. Instead he jerks his thumb to the door, and says in the _most_ awkward voice possible, “I’m gonna go watch a movie.”

Hyunjae, for once, seems at a loss for words. “You- huh?”

Juyeon nods faster now, and he briefly wonders if one can get whiplash this way, then repeats, “I’m gonna go. Because there’s this movie. And I said I’d watch it.”

Hyunjae blinks blankly - mortifiedly - back at him, before he seems to snap out of it. “Yeah! Uh- go, go for it, I’ll- uh, I’ll see you later. Or not. Your call!” His voice goes a little high-pitched towards the end, bordering on hysterical, and Juyeon would laugh if he didn’t know his own voice was about to do the same thing if he didn’t scarper the fuck out of there.

So he does.

He takes off at a breakneck speed, not pausing to even look back or wave at Hyunjae who has his arm raised in a goodbye, and as he dashes out of the shop, Juyeon tries desperately not to imagine the pained expression on his former mentor's face when Juyeon doesn’t return the farewell.  
  


~~

  
Of course, when he gets home, Kevin takes one sniff before sussing out the entire situation. Juyeon doesn’t end up watching a movie that night at all — in fact, Kevin and Jacob let the entire Disney filmography since 2000 play on their TV while they carefully and painstakingly go through Juyeon’s pros and cons list with him.

Not that that really takes that long, because really, the list is quite simple.

Cons:  ~~ This thing crashes and burns. ~~

Pros: LOVE, DUDE. LOVE. _(Kevin)_

Still, they both lean their heads on either side of his shoulder and let him stare at the list until his eyes feel like they’re about to fall out of his head, and then finally, when the “travesty that is Chicken Little, the only smear on an otherwise impeccable film list” _(Kevin again)_ plays, they shut the TV off and drag him firmly into bed.

It feels stupid to be tucked into bed by his two friends who are both shorter and slighter than him, but Juyeon likes it anyway.

Kevin pats his cheek and says, “All you need is love, my man” and Jacob hugs him one last time and murmurs, “We’re very proud of you” and then they click the light shut and back quietly out of the bedroom.

Juyeon stares up at his dark ceiling, not for the first time contemplating how good his friends are and how utterly and completely besotted he is with a witch who lives across the city and who performs impossibly difficult magic with a half-chewed stick of liquorice.

Tomorrow will be the day, he decides.  
  


~~  
  


When he goes back to the shop the next morning, Juyeon is surprised to see it closed for once. In his entire tenure of two whole months at Hyunjae’s store, he has never seen him fail to open business even for a day.

Tentatively, he knocks on the door before pushing it open.

“Hyung?” he asks quietly into the silent building. From behind the curtain leading into the kitchen, a mass of chaotic brown frizz suddenly pops up.

“Juyeon?” Hyunjae asks disbelievingly. “I didn’t know you were- you’re here?” 

Juyeon smiles relievedly, glad to see Hyunjae alive and reasonably well looking. “Yeah, I uh, I wanted to come see you. I think we should talk.”

Hyunjae stumbles out of the kitchen and into the main area of the shop, and only then does Juyeon see that he is still in his pyjamas. It speaks to Hyunjae’s personal style choices that the fact that his cyan sleep-clothes with glittery cuffs aren’t too out of the ordinary, and Juyeon has to bite back a fond smile when he sees the witch all rumpled, and soft, and _adorable_.

“Yes, yes, let’s talk, Juyeon-ah,” Hyunjae says hurriedly. He drags Juyeon towards the shop’s sitting area and plops himself down quickly. “Look, I think we should just move on from yesterday and pretend it never happened.”

Juyeon blinks.

“Uh-”

“No, hear me out,” Hyunjae interrupts nervously. “You’re a great witch and a really good friend, and I don’t want my stupid- y’know, to get in the way of things.”

He conjures a piece of paper out of the air and passes it to Juyeon across the sofas. “Here,” he says. “This is a job contract — if you want to, I’d love to take you on full time. Things have been…really, really great since you started working here.” 

The praise makes Juyeon flush, and he can practically feel his eyes softening as he looks at the overly generous wage Hyunjae has written into a contract that looks like it was plagiarised off the internet for a fast-food job. It takes him a second to school his features, and Juyeon sees Hyunjae fidgeting awkwardly out of the corner of his eye in that time — a sight that makes his chest fill with warmth.

When he’s finally composed, Juyeon pushes the paper back across the coffee table slowly. As gently as he can, he says, “No. Sorry hyung.” 

Hyunjae’s face falls. He takes a shuttered breath, eyebrows scrunched with dejection. “Oh.”

Juyeon allows a tiny smile to tug at his lips then, hopelessly endeared by Hyunjae’s crestfallen expression. “I couldn’t take a job here — it’s in violation of Section Z, Article 727 of the Magical Constitution to have a romantic relationship with your magical employer,” he says quietly, a little bit of amusement colouring his tone. 

Hyunjae huffs rather pathetically, pale fingers fiddling with the corner of the application when it suddenly clicks. He looks up and blinks.

“Wait. What?” he utters numbly. 

Juyeon’s face breaks into a goofy grin, and he runs a hand through his hair before leaning forward. “I said it’s a violation to have a romantic rela- _woah!_ ” he yelps, his entire body suddenly flying through the air to land a short distance away right into Hyunjae’s lap in a crumpled heap of limbs and robes. 

Before he can exclaim in protest, warm (and admittedly, slightly chapped) lips are on his, kissing him with equal parts ardour and tenderness. There’s nothing really to do except to go blank in the brain and hope that he’s kissing Hyunjae back- _god_ , he’s kissing Hyunjae (Hyunjae!) finally after pining away for months like a lovesick teenager and it’s just so _right_.

Slender fingers tangle in his hair and tug just so to make Juyeon gasp wetly into the other mage’s mouth. His own hands move to grip Hyunjae tightly by the nape of his neck, and Juyeon has to remind himself of his 1/32 parts Yeti blood so as to not grab Hyunjae too hard. 

Finally, when Hyunjae pulls away with bright eyes and a spit-slicked red mouth, he smiles dazzlingly at Juyeon and brushes a strand of hair out of Juyeon’s face. Unfortunately, where Hyunjae looks incandescently happy, Juyeon can barely keep the surely dopey expression off his countenance. 

Then Hyunjae squints, discerning and suspicious, at him before poking Juyeon in the nose. “Didn’t you say there were exactly 700 articles in the Magical Constitution?” he asks.

Juyeon can only nod blankly back, eyes still glossy and spaced out. “Yeea- mhm. Yep,” he mumbles. 

Hyunjae grins. He jerks his hand in the air and suddenly, a warm mug of tea is being pressed into Juyeon’s limp hands.

“Have some tea, Juyeon-ah, you’re looking a little flushed.”

~~   
  


_(Of course, Juyeon never does end up working in Hyunjae’s Hocuspocus, Hijinks and Hexes Hemporium — while it’s not technically against the law, everyone knows it’s professionally imprudent and fiscally foolhardy to work with your boyfriend, and Juyeon is nothing if not professionally prudent and fiscally staid._

_Besides, the Cursebreakers Institute is only a ten minute walk away from Hyunjae’s store, and Juyeon thinks it’s nice when Hyunjae fusses over him after a long day’s work as a Very Important Cursebreaking Witch.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this silly little thing! As always, comments and kudos are endlessly appreciated.
> 
> If you want to chat or get updates on my work, come find me on Twitter (link in profile)!
> 
> \- Anon


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